


A Cat with Perfect Pitch

by TrickySleeves



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cats, Character Study, Classical Music, Established Relationship, F/M, Felileth Week (Fire Emblem), Found Family, Pianists AU, Sexual Content, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Planning, cw: independent contractor precarity, silliness, vices: smoking and alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25220971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickySleeves/pseuds/TrickySleeves
Summary: Part 1:Two grumpy pianists adopt three cats that are perfectly charming and one that's a complete nightmare.“Maybe we should lay some ground rules with him.”“Have you ever tried to reason with a cat?”Part 2: You are begrudgingly invited to a wedding.Felileth Week - Day 1 & 7
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 26
Kudos: 57





	1. Part One - Byleth

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Your Perfect Tempo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073109/chapters/55191991). Nonetheless, it stands alone just fine.
> 
> If you want to reference the Liszt piece (or you’re horny for pianists), check out watch Valentina’s fingers on [Hungarian Rhaps No 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdH1hSWGFGU)—OMG.

**The day they adopted Liszt…**

The day they adopted Liszt, Byleth had led Felix behind a dive bar when he wouldn’t let her stick her hand down his pants at the corner booth.

Byleth may have put aside her punk wardrobe. She may sometimes let the sensible blue roots show under her green hair, and from time to time, she may consider not dyeing at all anymore. But she never grew out of diving low at a bar.

Pushing him up against bricks painted with a fading mural of Ziggy Stardust, she crouched slowly. Her hands trailed down his front, across his chest, over his stomach, landing to toy at his hips.

She liked to caress some luxury into their dirty quickies.

Felix’s cats-eyes flamed wide, as they looked into the night over her head while the noise from the nearby highway droned steadily.

She had just barely gotten his pants unbuttoned as she hummed _Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2_ into his bulge. The vibration was giving him a lift with every breath, and the denim layer was beginning to feel thin between them. Byleth tugged the zipper, and Felix threw his head back, hitting it a little too hard on the bricks, as his rye-soaked eyes shut gratefully. 

Her mouth was puffing the head with hot air and blandishing kisses through his navy underwear when she heard a cat’s meow, high-pitched and tentative.

Byleth jerked her head up, letting the elastic from Felix’s underwear snap back against his hips, just as he was about the feel the good breeze on his dick. Still crouching, she peered around for the source of the noise.

“Did you hear that?”

The more Byleth’s head moved away from him, the harder he got. “Byleth,” his voice growled through his throat, suddenly parched, “this was your idea.”

“There’s a cat over there. I saw its shadow go by!”

She rose out of her crouch, and Felix’s eyes were rolling as he stifled the desire to push her head back down.

“It’s just a cat. I don’t care.” He reached out to grab her but she already began walking away.

“Let’s find it.”

Felix ground his jaw and rezipped his pants, “Okay, okay then.” He began breathing through his nose.

Byleth was still humming the Liszt rhapsody as she wandered the parking for the source of the meow. Felix searched in the other direction.

It would be up to him to find the cat. Byleth misplaced everything—student papers, research files, her morning coffee mug, the book she had been reading just five minutes ago. What he had once mistaken for organization throughout her apartment was simply a threadbare lifestyle. By the time Byleth’s life had filled in with things—concert attire, travel souvenirs, Felix’s wardrobe of black turtlenecks and teal pants—he realized that Byleth was not an organized person.

The same messy fervor that she brought to her expressive piano playing, that same sexy chaos that brought him to a critical-hit climax every time they made love, also made sure that she never knew where her keys were.

One strange side effect was that Byleth was always keeping an eye out for others’ lost things. She frequently picked up odds-and-ends left behind by their friends—old hairpins, posters and leaflets, a tube of lipstick—and bizarrely carried them with her until she found their rightful owner.

Was it any wonder, then, that she would also take in strays?

“You’re going in the wrong direction,” Felix tapped his foot near the cat’s hiding place. “And it’s not a cat.”

“So what is it?” Byleth asked, taking gradual steps that wouldn’t startle it.

“A kitten.”

“You really want to split hairs over this?”

Byleth thought nothing of crouching down onto her hands and knees in the grungy parking lot of a dive bar. Felix felt his desire jump, the last remnant of their earlier activities. He imagined pulling her up by her hips and pushing her against the car from behind. But he stifled that too, and sighing, he let one knee touch the ground beside her.

Their fate was sealed when the gray kitten didn’t run away from Byleth’s outstretched hand. It came up to her and ran its pink nose against her fingers before putting the top of its head under her palm.

“Starved for attention, and look, no collar.”

They took it home.

Byleth gave it the name Liszt, and Felix bought it a collar with a bell. Liszt bit the bell off and spat it into an air vent where it released an ominous jingle whenever the fan came on. And, well, that was their Liszt—already haunting the place.

It had taken Felix less than two hours to warm up to the kitten, from the first time he saw it snatch a treat from Byleth’s hand and run into the bathroom to eat it in solitude. On the other hand, it took Liszt almost a month to warm up to them.

He was constantly hiding in Byleth’s half-opened drawers and wandering out to the sound of piano music. Then, he would sit precariously on the piano’s console and stare into their souls while they played.

Byleth let herself indulge in the campiness of playing Liszt to Liszt. Felix would come home from a rehearsal to hear Byleth playing a riot on the upright. Under her fingers, Liszt’s most famous rhapsody was threatening to go full circus, turning a battle into a merry-go-round. 

Each note shredded muscle memory into a statement on the carousel of time, and Felix relished overhearing the carefully bridled chaos that sent her fingers flying. Her playing was so percussive her hands might raise six centimeters from the keys before coming back down to land accents that would have bruised any flesh but ivory.

Byleth stayed up late to practice the complex runs over and over. At some point, the upstairs neighbors decided it their duty to pay them a visit.

“Liszt?” The neighbors asked at the door.

The little gray kitten knew its name and came to greet them, but Felix snatched it into his arms before it could get through the door.

“Liszt,” he said firmly.

“Could you guys keep it down? Between the Bach first thing in the morning, and this Liszt late at night—”

“—If it was bothering you so much, you would know that I’ve been practicing Chopin ballades in the morning.” Felix kicked the door shut on them, holding the cat with both arms to keep it from startling.

He didn’t tell Byleth about the neighbors. Nonetheless, he found her a few days later soundproofing the ceiling. Little Liszt twined the legs of the ladder she had borrowed from her dad, as she glued foam above them and used a long paint roller to cover it. She painted stars on the ceiling, according to a misremembered lyric from an old indie-rock tune.

* * *

**The day they adopted Chopin…**

The day they adopted Chopin, Sylvain had broken Dorothea’s heart—again.

Byleth had flown out of town to perform at a young composers’ showcase, while Felix, much to both of their disappointment, had to stay home. Ever the rebel, Byleth had promised to bootleg the performance.

Meanwhile, Felix received a fateful text message from Sylvain, saying that he and Dorothea had split up again. Sylvain left the house he was sharing with Dorothea and took his sweet middle-aged cat with him.

By the time Byleth returned from her trip, Sylvain was still sleeping on the couch. Sylvain’s cat, however, had taken to sleeping with Felix in the bed. Their own Liszt, barely out of kitten-hood looked on from a cat tree, tail twitching against the wall.

Byleth and Felix took in both strays. They let Sylvain keep his name, but they rechristened the cat as Chopin. Sylvain had only ever called him ‘cat’, and Dorothea used to call him ‘Ferdie’, because of his orange hair. The cat was already quite confused; what would another name hurt?

“Dorothea wants to grow old together.” Sylvain sat beside Byleth on the back porch and slid a cig from her pack.

“I thought you were on board this time—after your loose-cannon year down in Texas.” Byleth turned her eyes from counting stars and tossed him the lighter from her pocket.

“I just can’t stop going all the way.” Sylvain’s mind was an airport carousel of past prostitutes, smoking the good ganja spliffed with that Virginia tobacco, men who lived like genies, genies who lived like men, and a suitcase with a compartment just for the condoms. It wasn’t easy to stop the carousel and get off. “I almost married three women before breakfast.”

“I hope that’s just a turn of phrase.”

“Goddess, me too.”

“And yet, you can’t go all the way with Dorothea?”

“She wants kids, By.” Byleth puffed short and ashed into the mug she kept on the porch. “What if I’m just as bad a dad as my folks?”

“You took too many psych courses in college.”

Sylvain’s laugh drew Chopin outside, and the older cat began rubbing his head against Sylvain’s arm. “That may be, but I worry. I mean you’re tight with your dad, and even Felix seems okay with Rodrigue lately.”

Byleth lapsed, her awkward mind churning up what to say.

“What does your dad have to do with it? If you like Dorothea and your future kid, just work to be better. And believe me, if you’re worried about it, Felix will always be there to kick your ass back into shape when he sees you slipping.”

Sylvain was off their couch after two weeks. Chopin, however, stayed for the rest of his life.

He grew into his name: affable but persnickety, right down to the dainty way he shook out each paw after leaving the litterbox.

The poor cat had been uprooted so many times, he adapted to their structure and wouldn’t let it go. He demanded food on such a tight schedule it would have impressed the head of a military academy.

Every morning that Felix settled into the piano stool, Chopin would hop into his lap, rubbing his small pink nose against Felix’s pinky and requesting to be part of the fanfare. Felix indulged it.

The old cat seemed to know more than he let on. He knew the days of the week, each step of their routines, and when to expect whom. More than that, though, he was a keen observer of their lifestyle.

For instance, Chopin knew that wherever he performed, Felix drew a crowd that came to see a pianist who was young, skilled, and shockingly attractive, all under the aegis of the name Fraldarius—that famous musician’s pedigree.

Of course, Felix hated that people only came to see him because of his name. Of course, Byleth hated that her performances were empty because she lacked a name.

Felix played Byleth’s pieces in concert to give her name recognition. He put out recordings of her work. The audiences received her music happily; it was other performers who left her in the dust, and the commissions just weren’t rolling in.

Byleth pretended not to be phased, but Felix always knew when she slipped back under her mask. One day, Byleth had had a particularly bad consultation with a violinist looking for a fifteen-second intro to a Youtube channel. The musician had spent the consult negging Byleth’s work and talking down her rates, after which Byleth headed home feeling cold and demonic, only to find a note taped to the door:

_Breathe deep. Let it go. No Ashen Demons allowed in this house._  
_Love, Felix._

It worked, as did Liszt greeting her at the door with a sweet _puuurrrrpp_.

Byleth embraced struggle. She liked working, practicing, listening to veterans, and enjoying a well-earned beer. No, the work wasn’t causing the pain. 

The thing was, she had identified music as an outlet. And it seemed that the world was telling her this wasn’t enough.

Byleth tried to compose this problem—

  
**Old Cat Blues**

The key is E-flat minor. If you don’t know what that sounds like, it’s fine. Here are some slant rhymes to help you grasp the gist:

Imagine running your hands over a cat’s back. The hair smooths out for a second, and then it ruffles into those little waves of fur that stick up in ridges. These ridges might continue to adjust as the skin flexes back to its normal resting position.

Now, imagine running your hand through Felix’s hair. He usually presses in, leaning his scalp against your hand at first. Then, as you drag your hand through the length, his face goes from blush to scrunch, before a two-second internal jury decides whether to claw you away with his backhand or grab your face for a kiss.

At the synthesis between these two gestures is E-flat minor.

Through Old Cat Blues, Byleth channeled her inner Gershwin, fingers looping rhythms about deep love. A good blues song contains at least a few musical variations. Felix would call them inversions because Felix played mazurkas like a precision engineer. Variations are different, though; they are to themes what syncopation is to rhythm:

 _You think you know something,_ the variation says. _You think you have me all figured out. I contain multitudes—fucking multitudes. I will big bang something completely new from this score. It might sound familiar. It might come from this same familiar voice, this same familiar key, but I am changing, and I will change you._

According to Old Cat Blues:

A couple loves deeply. Their friends cite them as the most talented people they know. They inspire others to hustle. ONE was that student in grad school who shut down the bullshit with a cold nonchalance that made the competition drink tears in their nightly cocktails. THE OTHER was that pianist in the program who effortlessly ripped Bach Arias across the keyboard at every concert and stole the finale at every show.

But routine comes for everyone. It forms a crust around bright, shiny surfaces. And, for a couple who had always prided themselves on their hard edges, how uncomfortable it must have been to find themselves sanded down by their own grind.

Because the brain delights in patterns. It feeds itself on learning symmetries until it realizes that the pattern has become boring. Numbness is a creeping thing, but the crisis is sudden. 

Suddenly, it needs that beat to drop.

It craves that breakbeat, seeks it, becomes addicted to the syncopation. Champions it, cherishes it, until the syncopated bit is all that the brain remembers, becoming the only bright and shiny thing in a year—in a lifetime—of quotidian exchanges.

Whenever Byleth finished playing Old Cat Blues, it was the piano that needed a smoke.

* * *

**The day they adopted Mendelssohn…**

The day they adopted Mendelssohn, Byleth had been rejected twelve times in a week and was feeling about 78 percent under the bell jar.

The first rejection had come from the person who had commissioned the chamber piece. They appreciated the direction she was taking, but they decided to hire someone with more clout.

That night in the bar, Byleth spitefully spent the entirety of the commission’s non-refundable deposit on bourbons from every distillery in Kentucky. She sloshed half of the precious nectar on Felix as she handed him cup after cup, slurring “taste this, taste it!” Even though neither of them could taste anything anymore.

Felix didn’t even bat her away when she pressed sloppy kisses into his ear. His horizon loomed with the inevitable future of picking her up off the bathroom floor and holding her in the shower the next morning.

Each day after that, as Byleth tried to peddle the composition to other chamber groups, more rejections rolled in. They’d love to accept the piece, but their hands were bound. They couldn’t fill seats with a new composer’s name.

One the day of the tenth rejection, Byleth bought a pack of smokes.

She assured Felix this was only a three-cigarette day. It was their form of scaling the pain. For someone with a pack-a-day habit, three cigs were a 1.5/10. Byleth’s habit had been more like a half-pack a day, which meant she was registering a 3/10, a still manageable level of pain.

“Three?”

“Yep.”

“Then, why is almost half the pack gone?”

When had it become an 8-cig day? It was that same story with the numbness creeping. Someone else might have started crying to feel so exposed; instead, Byleth reached back and untied her lover’s hair.

“Felix,” she said, “please fuck me.”

“We have to talk about this at some point.”

“Not now, please.”

She pushed her body against his. She grabbed his hand and put it under her shirt on her rib cage.

“Well, since you’re begging.”

He wrapped his arms around her and began pulling her into the bedroom.

There are some things you do to remind yourself of how to feel alive. For Byleth, it had been music. And that had been perfect until music became her bread and butter. There’s nothing good that can’t be ruined by sales and marketing and promoting and branding.

So she relied on sex. Because Felix was the one stimulant that could help her feel like a live wire no matter what was going on with her career. To have sex with a powerhouse musician like Felix, she sometimes had to let herself compose impulsively like John Cage, her breath performing its own kind of Waterwalk.

Because Felix didn’t have time for muzak unless it’s sampled as some hip-hop song’s breakbeat, perfectly measured to demonstrate that Byleth’s hips don’t lie. And for her, it was Felix’s body, his smile, the way he felt inside of her. It was all so good and she was hooked.

For his part, Felix had always been more a man of action than words, and despite it being crude, perhaps primitive, this was exactly the kind of comfort he could give. When he had her in his arms, when his hands traced up her legs, he found her again—the Byleth of the campfires and the whiskey.

He didn’t need words to remind her that it was only a bad year; that composition after composition, she astounded him with her expressions; that he could listen to her play forever. It was only a bad year. Byleth was a force of nature, and he would play her compositions until whoever it was that she needed to prove herself to stood up and listened.

On the day of the 12th rejection, Felix came home with a kitten.

“What’s that?” Byleth glared from the piano bench.

“It’s a kitten.”

“It looks more like a dust bunny to me.”

“I’ve been told it will have long hair its entire life.”

“A bit like you, huh?” She walked close to peer at the kitten’s little green eyes framed by a long fringe of black hair.

“I’ll let you have it if you hand me your lighter and that pack of cigs.”

“Only if I get to name it Felix—”

“Byleth—” Both the kitten and Felix were giving her identical glares.

“—Mendelssohn.”

He huffed. “Fine”

It only took five days for Mendelssohn to become Byleth’s favorite kitty. They say you’re not supposed to play favorites, but Byleth had never been able to hold back her judgments. After all, that Eisner fused-out-of-iron stubbornness was what allowed her to weather most damages.

Mendelssohn sat above the keys, and sometimes, he stretched his head down to play a few. It was like the little kitty could read her mind, plunking out the perfect complement to whatever she was playing. As he grew up, Mendelssohn took his assistant composition duties seriously. He became so advanced that he could bite the paper staves where he thought a note should go. 

Liszt was a nuisance, Chopin an observer, but Mendelssohn could tap right into Byleth’s feelings. Byleth was obsessed with making the rejected piece better. She worked on it day and night, ignoring Felix, ignoring everything except Mendelssohn her muse. But the more she worked on it, the more she was slipping.

Byleth had feelings. She had feelings like melodies had harmonies, like concertos had conductors, like notebooks had ball-point pens. And Felix knew only one way to get her to talk about them.

“Play with me,” Felix beckoned Byleth over to the piano.

“Play what?”

“Just improvise.”

They sat side by side on the piano bench, while Mendelssohn plopped his fluffy round body down on the damper pedal.

Byleth started it off, framing a question under her fingers and then giving space for Felix to respond. His fingers danced near to hers, offering his clean precise notes. Her hands plopped a hard sob down on the keys. Felix kept his responses light, while Byleth plodded her feelings.

Little by little, he tried to gain her permission to warp it into a waltz, a romance, but the more she complained on the keys, the angrier his tones became. He raised his fingers from the keys.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” he yelled. “We’re all on our grind at some point! You’re getting better every day—stronger and faster. But you can’t fall apart like this while you do it. You’re going to make it—how can I prove it to you?”

Just as Byleth was about to start yelling back, Mendelssohn used his tiny claws to climb up her bare leg. Her fingers rose from the keys as she let out an involuntary squawk, and her eyes watered. It was forty seconds of torture, and then Mendelssohn was sitting on Byleth’s lap.

Did he know those little claws of his had just diffused an argument?

Breathing steadily through his nose, Felix began playing the opening bars of the first piece Byleth had written for him. Byleth’s face softened as he played, her fingers messing idly with the kitten’s stubby tail.

Fight or cuddle, Felix was the only thing that kept the pain from becoming a 10/10. Listening to him play, she could feel how far they had come. With him at her side, she could deal with a bad year or two, right?

* * *

**The night Annette foisted Mussorgsky on them…**

The night Annette foisted Mussorgsky on them, Annette and Ashe showed up for movie night with what appeared to be a fur muffler in desperate need of cleaning. Carried against Annette’s petite form, the lumpy fluff mass took up her whole torso. Felix peered at it with narrowed eyes, wondering why Annette would bring them a dirty bundle of furs and rags. Then, it turned its head and looked at him.

“Is that a cat?”

Byleth came to stand next to Felix at the door. “More like a mountain lion.”

“He’s beautiful isn’t he?” Annette barged her way into the apartment.

“Annette, why are you bringing the chupacabra into our apartment?”

“I thought he might like it here, and you’ll like him.” The tri-colored maine coon jumped out of Annette’s arms thudding hard on the floor.

Felix and Byleth shared a glance that made Ashe melt toward the door. “You said you had asked them ahead of time.”

“Oops, I forgot,” Annette smiled mischievously. She turned to Byleth, “Ginger cat needs a home. Can he stay with you until I find him one?”

“Why can’t you keep him?” Felix asked.

“Landlord doesn’t allow cats,” came Ashe’s weak excuse.

“You’re calling him ginger-cat?” Byleth watched the large cat pad around the room, sniffing at the armchair, rubbing his teeth glands against the bookcase.

“We found him on the side of the road, but he’s clearly domesticated. You can name him whatever you want.”

Byleth crouched and held her hand out to the cat who didn’t deign to come toward her. Instead, he decided to run his claws on Liszt’s scratching post. Byleth could see Liszt hissing from the doorway to her room.

“Why would we like this cat?” Felix watched the cat sniff at every surface of the room.

“He kind of sings,” Annette said.

“He sings…”

“He sings well.”

“Are you kidding? Why would I want a singing cat?”

Sure enough, when the group sat down to watch the movie, the cat sang along after each jingle and even some of the background music.

“That’s a neat trick,” Byleth said mildly, looking at the mustachioed cat.

“How do we get it to stop?” Felix asked when the cat continued singing after the credits were rolling.

“No idea,” Ashe looked at Annette as if she might shield him from the ire of the surliest couple they knew.

“You guys speak music, I’m sure you’ll be able to work something out with him,” Annette said perkily. She and Ashe retreated like cowards through the front door, leaving the unwelcome surprise of a gigantic dumpster cat looking at them from below the piano stool.

And here’s the thing about Mussorgsky, for that was what Felix grumpily named him. The cat had perfect pitch; his singing was someone’s cat-voiced platonic ideal. The fucker could sing better than either Felix or Byleth, and they both knew it.

It was the fact that he did. And he did it all the time.

While they tried to get some sleep, Mussorgsky sang the song from the movie credits. During the day, he sang along to the post-rock tunes that Byleth played on speakers around the apartment. He meowed radio jingles early in the morning. He yowled along to their piano playing.

His insistence annoyed the other cats, forcing Chopin and Liszt to make an uneasy alliance against him as a common enemy. Mendelssohn hid.

Byleth and Felix took to wearing earplugs at night and headphones throughout the day, just to block out the singing cat. The headphones were a problem. They put up a barrier between Byleth and Felix: they hadn’t had sex for two weeks.

Finally, when Felix came home from a rehearsal with the local orchestra, Byleth pounced. Snagging him as soon as he walked in the door, she pushed him against it.

“You’ve been distant.”

“I haven’t been sleeping—that cat howling all night.” His hands fell automatically to her hips.

“We have to do something about Mussorgsky,” Byleth said, pressing her chest forward into his.

“Know someone else we can pawn him off on?” He brought his forehead down to rest against hers. He looked tired with soft blue bags under his eyes and fine lines around his mouth. He always looked beautiful.

“Maybe we should lay some ground rules with him.”

“Have you ever tried to reason with a cat?”

Just as Felix’s hands were starting to press up her spine and her fingers were beginning to unbutton his shirt, Mussorgsky howled a perfect cat-voiced rendition of the intro to _Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2_. The sound stamped out the fire between them. Felix groaned a tired, defeated sound into her hair as they both ran cold.

“This sucks,” Byleth growled, giving up her seduction. That night, they locked the offensive cat out of their room while they cuddled the other three on the bed.

The next day, Byleth decided it was time to deal with it—no hesitation. She backed the massive cat into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Look cat, we have to talk.” She locked the two of them in so that there was no exit. Byleth took the high ground sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

Mussorgsky turned his dour face on her.

“I’ve had a bad year, okay?! I’ve been working through a lot of shit, facing a lot of rejection. I’m working really hard to refill my mojo meter, and you’re not helping. So we’re going to lay down some ground rules.”

The cat licked inefficiently at his beard.

“One, no singing after 10 pm.   
“Two, no singing before 7 am.  
“Three, no singing while either of us plays the piano.   
“Four, no singing during seduction.”

Mussorgsky flicked at his ear with a paw.

“You break any of these rules and you’re going back to the highway whence you came.”

He licked the paw.

“Sing a D major scale if you agree to these terms.”

And the fucking cat did it. His weird cat-throat perfectly vibrated each frequency. Byleth gave him an I-thought-so nod and opened the bathroom door.

Over the next couple of weeks, Mussorgsky observed the rules and chilled out. The other cats began repopulating the apartment around him.

Byleth’s mojo refilled slowly. She received three new commissions and sold the rights for another orchestral arrangement. Felix filled the house of a small club, playing a half-set of her music.

“Cat’s been quiet lately,” Felix said one Saturday morning when Byleth emerged from the room for her morning coffee.

“I had a talk with him.” Byleth leaned against the counter and gave Felix her old cocksure smirk.

Felix returned a puzzled expression, “Really? Because I’ve been trying to talk to you for months.”

“So let’s talk.” She sat down at the table next to him, news tablet set aside and coffee mugs on opposite ends.

“Byleth, I love you.”

“I know, Felix,” she gulped the coffee, hoping to banish the exhaustion from her voice.

“You’ve been struggling. And wallowing. And I’m such a fool, I’ve allowed it.”

Adrenaline shot Byleth’s eyes wide, waking her right up. Her heart accelerated to 130 bpm like a fucking house techno track. Was this the talk? 

She wanted to stick her fingers into Felix’s mouth to stifle him. She wanted him to suck her thumbprints off, turning her too-skilled fingers into something perfect and new. Every thought rushed toward making herself a lovable creature again.

Because you don’t give ultimatums to the lovely ones.

“It’s not because you’re not good, because you are.”

Couple’s therapy was for losers who couldn’t fight out their problems. If she challenged him to a fist-fight now—one of their kick-boxing spar matches—would he forget all about this?

“Skill is one thing, but I don’t like how you’ve been suffering. If we can make it easier on ourselves, why don’t we? If we have an ace in the hole, let’s use it. You taught me that.”

“Your father?”

She traced scales on the counter, beating it with the too-familiar right-hand runs from her Hungarian Rhapsody. How fitting that she should play such a full-circus piece as her life spiraled into tragedy.

Felix’s eyes were dark, his shoulders tense. “Not him—me. If it’s a problem of name recognition, I want you to have my name.”

Hold up! Record-screech, stop the track, hold the phone, what?

“Take my name, please. Because, otherwise I know you’ve got everything it takes, and I want to—”

She put a quick finger to his lips. Her mind was astride a painted horse on a merry-go-round galloping at four times the safe speed, while her heart pounded out the carnivalesque that kept spinning her from one conclusion to another.

Felix stopped talking.

Get off the carousel, Byleth, just talk to him straight. Her other hand tugged his hair, already habitually untucking it from his hair tie.

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

Her hands unconsciously moved down to begin unbuttoning his shirt. The gesture was innocent enough; she wanted to feel some tangible proof that his music-box of a heart was beating as violently as her own. Felix’s eyes traveled to her hands and she stopped.

“Essentially yes.” He reached out to stroke her hair.

“To further my career?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

They both froze into the tension, desire be damned.

“Then, no.”

“No?” It was more snarl than word. He yanked his hand back from her hair and wrapped his arm defensively around himself.

“I’m not going to marry you for my career!” She almost yelled it, emotions a mess of carnival songs.

Felix measured his breath in and out. He silently counted out one minute and then another minute. Byleth fantasized about angry sex.

_—His voice growling ‘Consent?’ and her jaw-clenched nod, and him pushing her forward against the wall by her hips. Just like they had after that jazz bar gig on the Chesapeake when Felix had accused Byleth of flirting with the long-haired bartender, and Byleth had accidentally let it slip that Felix had misinterpreted the rhythm on the blues number, which was only saved because the drummer could think on his feet. Then Felix had grabbed her hair, pushing his thumb under her jaw—_

“What if it’s because,” he said, breaking the silence and bringing Byleth back to the kitchen table, “you’re the most talented and skilled person I’ve ever met, and everything you create amazes me. If you’re the only person I had to talk to for the rest of my life, I would be okay with it. I love you, and I think you feel the same way about me.”

“I do. And if that were the case, I’d say yes.”

He grabbed her arm hard, tight. She wanted it tighter, harder. She wanted him to leave a mark. “It is the case, and you know it.”

“Then, yes.”

Felix jerked Byleth to straddle him on his chair, nearly upending their coffee mugs on the table.

“Say it again,” he said, pulling her tight against his lap.

Her hands were in his hair and she curved her neck to speak against his temple, “Yes, I’ll marry you. Because I love you.”

 _I will never get sick of this_ , he murmured against her chest, as he laid her out on the kitchen table. He licked the pulse racing through her neck, as her breath syncopated into a brand new rhythm neither of them would ever forget.

One of the mugs smashed to the ground, but they didn’t care. They weren’t even bothered when Mussorgsky broke rule number four and started singing _Canon in D_ through the hallway while they boned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for Felileth Week day 7, featuring:  
> —A new duet  
> —Drinking with the dads  
> —Cats dressed in tuxedos  
> —A bunch of familiar faces all there for the band  
> —More pomo references to make you hate me  
> —Oh, and a wedding, I guess


	2. Part Two - Felix

You. Come here and imagine this:

You have raven hair, amber eyes, and frequently frown—features that they told you you’d grow into someday. In the future, you’ll mostly use them to wreak havoc on other people’s self-confidence. But for now, you’re still a kid.

They sit you in front of an upright console. A piano tutor corrects your posture and reminds you for the seventh time to stop tapping your foot. Your fingers are perpetually sweaty and they stick to the keys.

You tie your hair in a bun because that’s how your brother does it. Glenn is cool, effortlessly cool, and he knows it. They didn’t tell you at the time that if long hair wasn’t a family trait, they would have made you cut it.

Your hands have a hard time stretching across six keys. You don’t even know the meaning of an octave yet.

They teach you the chromatic scale, calling it a ‘tone ladder’. They teach you to cross your thumb under. When you fumble it, they _tsk-tsk_ , and that sound becomes hardwired into your brain. After a few years, you’ll _tsk_ at yourself whenever you make a mistake.

They put a sheet of music in front of you. The hands play the melody separately. It’s a child’s version of ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ that teaches you to recognize a fifth-interval any time you hear it.

By the time you’re twelve, you’re playing Mozart’s _Twelve Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman"_. You skillfully twinkle stars in perfect sixteenth notes. Your hands have found the deeper meaning of an octave before your dick has found puberty, and no one’s surprised.

No one’s even remotely impressed because your name is Fraldarius.

Out of all the things you can inherit from your family, it’s the last name that’s the heaviest.

A family cut short: a mom who cut out; a dead brother who won’t make it to your wedding. I don’t want your sympathy—don’t give me any of that. It turns out, if you only have one family member left, there’s still so much he can pass down to you.

You can inherit your dad’s cat-winged eyes. You can inherit his woman-magnet blue tresses, his overall good looks, his above-average musical skills.

None of that’s a sure thing, though. Genetics is a stats game, and the only thing you can know you’ll inherit is his name.

Unless you’re a bastard.

Sometimes, I wish I was a bastard.

* * *

  
**all I want in life’s a little bit of love**

Wedding planning was all in the lists. And, truly, there was a list for everything: caterers, bakers, and florists; musicians and favor crafters; time tables, phone numbers, guests’ addresses, items to purchase; and the lists went on…

While Felix and Byleth sleep peacefully in the next room, the wedding lists would get frisky with each other in the night. They made list-babies that overpopulated the inspiration board Byleth’s best friend had cobbled together for her.

That’s right, Claude had stolen an old chalk board from their alma mater and lined it with cork. He pinned it with print-outs of other people’s wedding ideas, saying stuff like, _Here Teach, check out the minimalist lines on this dress_ , and _This flower is called ‘love-in-a-mist’, how’s that for a vibe?_

But the lists rampaged across the board. They trampled the layers of color themes, ribbon samples, bouquet pics, and paint chips. It was starting to look like the kind of pinup bulletin detectives use to track a serial killer.

Red string spun cobwebs across their wedding plans, linking victim pictures across a map of the killer’s hunting grounds. Except, in this case, the map was actually a dinner seating chart.

And that seating chart was already a blood-soaked massacre of red pen that demarcated a territorial struggle across their Grondor Fields wedding venue, as they played musical chairs with their guests’ names: _If Edelgard is at table 5, Dimitri will have to be at table 12. Should we sit Sylvain and Dorothea together? Won’t she want to sit with Edelgard? Are Sylvain and Dorothea even on good terms again? Why are we playing matchmaker at our own wedding?_

By far, though, the worst crime on the board was the ever-expanding guest list:

“Four people,” Felix had made his first offer, his face in the valley between Byleth’s breasts. “Sylvain, Claude, my dad, your dad.”

Byleth pushed his head away from her, “Don’t talk about our dads and motorboat me in the same breath.” As Felix grumbled and rolled off her, she said, “What about Ingrid, you’d leave her out?”

“She doesn’t even like weddings.”

“She’ll like your wedding. And there’s Annette and Ashe. Your father will, of course, add Dimitri to the list. I was hoping Seteth could come, he’s been such a support for me. And Dorothea?”

“Dorothea?” Felix asked gruffly, sensing a conflict from inviting his best friend’s on-again, off-again flame.

“Well, see, I already asked if her band could play.”

“She’s coming down from Baltimore?”

“Yeah, and I think she might bring some of her crust punk friends with her—you remember Balthus and Hapi?”

Felix grunted.

“And Hubert, Edelgard, and Ferdinand were planning on flying in from California, and—”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why are they all coming? What’s it matter to them?”

“They like us for some reason— Besides, they’re family.”

Felix sighed and stretched on his side like a cat, skin pulling tight over the lean muscle that wrapped his ribs. She touched him, fingertips murmuring affirmations across his skin, and he closed his eyes involuntarily.

When Byleth had started taking in strays, it hadn’t occurred to him that his ‘family’ would become a collage of the ones who stuck around—video chats with Claude, late-night drinking sessions with Sylvain, movie nights with Annette and Ashe, Dorothea and the crew taking trains across entire states to attend his concerts.

Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t just that Byleth took in strays. Perhaps they—he and Byleth—were the strays that others had taken in.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll put more thought into it this week.”

“For that,” Byleth said, reaching for him under the bedsheets, “You win a reward.”

Post-coital was the only occasion Felix ever smoked with Byleth. Even then, it wasn’t as good as playing the piano right after sex with his leg still twitching against the stool while his mind tried to focus on fingerwork. That day, he did both.

The problem was, like detectives who go out for a smoke break to squeeze a few deep breaths into their lungs, they always came back inside to find the murder board that was their wedding plans waiting for them.

Like a list of notes on the killer’s M.O., the guest list was that one point around which all the others oriented their conspiracies. Byleth unpinned this very scandal sheet from the corkboard. Irreverent of the thick, ivory paper’s wedding-aura, she folded it into quadrants and stuffed it into her bag.

Felix threw one last glance back at the board with the kind of pitted anxiety one saves for reviewing a sports bracket on which they placed all the wrong bets.

He couldn’t help thinking that weddings were a mistake, especially when the dowry was his own name.

* * *

  
**to take the pain away**

If Felix could have chosen any trait not to inherit from his father, it would have been Rodrigue’s pitiful alcohol tolerance.

While Jeralt was smacking his fourth beer down on the pub’s wooden table, Rodrigue was barely quaffing his second. Nonetheless, the stately violinist was already laughing too loudly, and he had rosy spots burning up both his cheeks.

“So the kids are tying the knot.” Jeralt’s lips twisted, not knowing exactly know what to do: frown? smile? tremble?

“Forgive me for saying so, but I never thought I’d see the day—for Felix at least.” Rodrigue made a gesture like wiping sweat from his brow. “I’m just glad he found someone who understands him.”

“She can hold her own,” Jeralt dug in his pocket, theatrically looking for a cig so that no one would see him teary-eyed.

“What’s with all this slander?” Byleth asked, popping into the booth beside her dad.

Rodrigue raised his glass to her and Byleth clinked it right back. “May I ask, have you been thinking about how this day will go?”

“Everyone’s been planning it around us, actually…” Byleth smoothed out the now crinkled guest list and pinned it to the table with her pint glass. “It’s like they don’t trust us to throw a party.” She ran her finger down the list, searching for weak spots while Jeralt peered over her shoulder.

“Why should they?” Felix asked, slipping in next to Rodrigue, whiskey clutched in his hand.

“We’re fun,” Byleth said, blank face shifting focus between each of her companions. Felix rolled his eyes. “We’re fun, right?”

“I think you’re fun, kiddo.”

“Thanks, dad.”

Rodrigue hiccuped. “So,” he said, recovering with a blush, “Have you thought about asking your guests to dress for a theme?”

“No, why should we?”

Felix rose from the table. Having quickly gulped down his drink, he was needing another. Byleth moved to follow.

“They’re embarrassing,” Felix growled as he and Byleth stood at the bar for another round. Byleth would never tell him, but she couldn’t help but notice that his reddening cheeks were identical to his father’s.

“I think it’s sweet.” 2-drinks-Byleth had her father’s crooked smile and a propensity to tease Felix right to the end of his rope. Of course, it helped that her expressions had softened like butter ever since Felix had put his ring around her finger.

“They’re talking flower varieties.”

“Better them than us.”

“We said it would be a small ceremony.” 2-drinks-Felix burned a perennial flush across his face, and it was always the start of him getting a little handsy: touching Byleth’s back, rubbing his knuckles against Byleth’s hand.

“And only big ceremonies can have flowers?”

“And ushers… they’re talking about ushers.”

“Whatever, we’ll use the cats as ushers—just put them in tuxedos.”

Felix looked at Byleth’s cheeks. Soft pink, but not flushed. Was she wasted or was she joking? It was a question he asked so often he could have made it into a game show. “That’s insane.”

“If we can’t herd the cats, we’ll let them herd us.”

“Even more insane. I just mean, if we do it their way we’ll be walking down the aisle of a big church to fucking _Canon in D_ , and you’ll be wearing a big fluffy white dress—”

Byleth cackled. “But you’re underestimating my dad’s desire to ‘paint it black’.” Felix blanched at the thought of Rolling Stones covers at his wedding, the pink lights momentarily going out of his cheeks. “By the way, what did the graphic designer say?”

“He won’t print the wedding schedule or invitations. There are apparently too many em-dashes. He said it was a crime against structure to use that many em-dashes on one page—” oops, he wasn’t supposed to tell her that. He had meant to keep that slight to himself.

Byleth’s face shifted between annoyance and neutrality. Would they be allowed a say in anything? “Fuck it, delete them all—burn it all down.”

Felix smiled, “Now who’s the ray of sunshine?”

“When do we get a say in any of it?” Felix shrugged looking tired. “Well, I say we burn it all down.” She was fired up now and looking toward the table at what would be her first victim, the dratted guest list.

“We’re not calling it off, idiot,” he said, looking like he wanted to punch her—with his lips.

She sighed, slow and heavy, “I’m not saying that. It’s just, whatever this is—this wedding pageant. If you’re done with it, I’m done with it. We can do it our own way.”

“And what way is that?”

She shrugged and rotated the ring on her finger. “No more inspo boards, no big fluffy dresses, and no more seating charts.”

“I can agree with that. But we’ll have to do some of our own planning.”

“ _tch_ , how tedious,” she twitched her mouth downward in her best Felix impression.

In response, he slid his hand into the small of her back tucking it upward under her shirt to steal her warmth.

They looked back at the two dads at the table. “So who’s going to tell them, then?”

* * *

**getting strong today**

Felix was slightly obsessed with his morning routine: Showering and grooming were a given. Shaving was indispensable because if there was one thing he couldn’t abide, it was stubble. Onto the cat feeding: two cats in the kitchen, two cats in the living room. Then, there was the piano playing.

Byleth had a morning routine of her own, and it generally involved floating into consciousness while listening to Felix play—metronome ticking, notes carefully spinning a web of Felix’s inner thoughts. When she was ready to emerge, she would kiss him from above until she could start a blush from him. If she was lucky, he would stop what he was doing to bring her down and straddle his legs on the stool, her back brushing the forgotten keys.

“But Felix,” she murmured that morning, her lips pressing against his jaw and catching some of the messily assembled hair that dripped down, “No more Chopin in the morning? Here I find you decapitating my own pieces.”

Rather than pulling her down into his lap, he turned away and grabbed a stack of papers from the top of the piano. “I’ve been doing some wedding planning.”

“With my juvenilia?”

He raised his eyebrows, “I’ve been arranging your compositions into a duet… for our wedding.” Byleth couldn’t say anything, so she threw expressions at him: She was annoyed; she was touched; this was a thing she didn’t deserve. So Felix added, “You better practice or I’m going to wipe the floor with you in front of everyone we know.”

“So it’s like that, is it?” She flipped through the part he handed her. “Well, I’ll be taking this then.” She sat heavily on the stool and leveraged her hips to give him a good push off. As Felix tumbled to the floor, three cats came to investigate why he was on the ground while the fourth looked sullenly from a cat tree on high.

What’s in a score—a roadmap or a list of landmarks? Sometimes it felt like Felix’s fingers were on train rails, playing exactly what was written before him. Does it give you a choice? Does it ask you to think for yourself at all?

Byleth would say that it’s all about his interpretation, because Byleth read scores like they were nautical maps and the keyboard a vast ocean with the latitude to float any which way across its waters. And yet, Felix couldn’t shake the feeling that he was strapped into a kayak, and any false move, any mistimed scale or fumbled run would send him rolling into the deep.

That morning, he lay on the floor, listening as Byleth sight-read the duet he arranged for them. Chopin began kneading his rib with his two front feet, and Liszt started snagging at his ponytail.

These duets were always his idea, surfacing from his much-too-romantic depths. He ached from the need to experience Byleth’s fingers beside his, to remind him of what it meant to cut their own way in music as much as in life.

Learning to share a life is easier dreamed about than accomplished. To begin with, you don’t ‘accomplish’ a duet. You grow it and it grows you, and it always leaves something unfinished. That’s communication—and it’s exhausting.

Living with Byleth was imperfect, from the cigarettes she couldn’t quite kick to the days in a row that she straight up forgot to be affectionate while she focused on other things.

But Byleth was more than something to do with his hands. Byleth was the sensuality in the offbeat. Byleth was the pickup measure that gave the whole piece a rhythm. She was the demon who pounded out carnivalesque folk dances to complement his carefully rendered waltzes.

She played the new arrangements well, her hands remembering and anticipating the paths. Her harmonies were coming together quickly. She was getting too good too fast.

He rose beside her and stuck his tongue in her ear, gratified to hear her squawk.

He wriggled his tongue until her hands left the keys. His fingers moved to her stomach, tickling her into a collapse of laughing gasping giggles until she had writhed her way off the piano bench to land on the floor with him. By the time she was begging him to stop tickling her, he had her pants unbuttoned.

He tugged them off and threw them aside to join the carnage of their wedding plans scattered throughout the room. Pulling down her underwear put her bare ass on the wood floor with her back halfway on a teal rug, but there was nothing to complain about as he started humming into her crotch. Her eyes drifted upward to the stars on the soundproofed ceiling.

They say that the key to good oral sex is something like 80% enthusiasm, and oh boy did he enjoy making Byleth unravel until she couldn’t even form words. While he played her body like a clavichord, she wrote unintentional symphonies with breaths that staggered soprano trills among low throaty moans.

By the time he ended her, she was sensitive all over, so that all it took was his breath on her back or his tongue against the ridge of her ear to get her squirming again. Fucking amazing.

Byleth wouldn’t be outdone, though. She was too fucking competitive, which meant Byleth would always reciprocate.

While his tongue might be vicious, long, and sharp, hers was soft and wide. And when, a few days out of the week, she told him she loved him—he wasn’t pathetic enough to keep tally but he was soppy enough to know how often—she would sometimes laugh like it was a joke. Her tender smiles, though, would remind Felix knew that no matter what oceans they sailed together, they would always have the power to direct their own winds.

For example, she moved her mouth around him like ocean waves. Taking it deeper, as each of his breaths hitched with a deep-sea confusion spawning from the mixed metaphors of her hands moving—sometimes accompanying her mouth, sometimes touching the oceanic trenches of Felix’s body—until she had him at the edge. And, when she had the fucking nerve to stop and syncopate, he grabbed her head because he couldn’t help it, and they moved together until until un Un un TIL O! Volcanoes!

Shallow breath like he’d been running, legs twitching, Byleth brought him a hand-towel to clean off. And his legs didn’t stop twitching after the cig on the back porch or while he selfishly claimed the piano stool for some midday practice in nothing but boxers. She watched him over the top of her book, a burlesque performance she was only pretending not to enjoy.

* * *

**a giant step each day**

Sylvain knew better than to throw Felix a traditional bachelor party. Because Felix’s hands might be precious, but that wouldn’t stop him from throwing a rough right hook after one shot of tequila. And there would be no retaliation since Sylvain wasn’t willing to be the reason Felix had a black eye on his wedding day.

So when Sylvain showed up at his doorstep wearing a corduroy bow tie and a shit-eating grin, Felix scowled.

“I’m not in the mood to party. I haven’t gotten this last bit of the duet yet.” Felix almost shut the door on his best man’s face, but Sylvain still managed to hold it enough to slide in.

“Byleth already said you sound amazing.”

“Did she?” Felix looked down at his feet as a blush rose to his cheeks.

“She also said to get you out of this house, even if I had to drag you.” The red-haired man walked through the small apartment, picking out a jacket from the bedroom closet for Felix to wear and grabbing him a change of pants.

“Did she…” Felix followed him.

“Look, Fe, you guys may have scaled everything else back, but we’re still going to give you a little party.” Sylvain handed Felix a fresh black sweater.

“Who’s we? I told you I don’t want any girls.” Felix asked, begrudgingly changing into the pants.

“There will only be one ‘girl’, and I think you’ll like her.”

“Sylvain…”

“Trust me,” he put a hand on Felix’s shoulder and directed him out of the apartment.

Byleth and Claude were already on their second bourbon by the time Sylvain was pushing Felix into the bar. Claude was looking at the liquid with an annoyed face, hoping he would be permitted to switch to mixed drinks soon, while the bride-to-be chirped on about ‘the plan’:

She told Claude about how they would be playing a duet, hoping that most of the guests would remain in the dark that it was a wedding at all. At the end of the performance, they would stand up, brandish their marriage paperwork, and tell everybody to go party. There would be no walking down aisles to the nauseating flutter of flower petals.

Felix watched them talk from far away. There was a long time when Felix had hated that Claude was the only person besides himself that Byleth talked to like this. It had become a point of pride that she was a closed vault around other people, commenting sparingly, using her secret language with Felix to cast her secret shade.

Yet Claude had come marching into their apartment, talking about ribbon colors and which dress designs would look best on Byleth’s waistline. A wholly unnecessary question in Felix’s opinion since Byleth looked perfect in anything, and she could walk down the aisle in a Ramones t-shirt with the neck cut out and a pleather skirt for all he cared.

“You don’t have to worry about them, you know. I’ve seen enough couples to know what I’m looking at, and Byleth is all yours.”

Claude was like Byleth the way Sylvain was like him. Felix and Sylvain had grown up to have dynasties thrust upon them. Their family names dictated their ambitions and responsibilities. Byleth and Claude, however, were both outsiders and could have it their own way.

“I know that,” Felix said tightly.

At least that was how Felix saw it. If each of the other two bore deeper dynasties, it wasn’t something he would ever know much about.

“What, you’re just going to stare at her from across the bar?” Sylvain asked.

Feeling his eyes on her, Byleth turned toward the entrance. There was a small smile in the corner of her mouth, a spot that he knew intimately from a thousand kisses.

Every time he imagined this next step in his life, he wondered if he wasn’t actually drowning and just didn’t know it yet. The Fraldarius musical dynasty was enough to take over both their lives if they weren’t careful. Felix knew that if there was anyone who could help him shoulder the weight of being Fraldarius, it was her. And yet, he found himself searching for another way.

Their friends brought them a round of drinks and pulled out a deck of cards. It was predictable and comforting to go back to those old habits and rituals. However, Felix kept losing. That wasn’t new or strange, though; the red flag was the fact that he didn’t seem to care.

It was when Felix ambivalently lost a third round of cards without any competitive spirit, bluster, or sore-loser glaring that Byleth realized there must be something wrong.

“Come with me to get a drink,” she said pulling him away. “What is it? Are you getting cold feet?” She leaned her back against the bar as if any part of that conversation could be casual.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

He stepped in front of her, pinning her lightly. “We are going to get married and stay together until we die.”

Eyes wide, she leaned in for a swift kiss. It wasn’t special or steamy. It was the kind of kiss that had become knitted into the fabric of their days, like one of Bach’s ornaments, flawless and light among a mathematically precise line of notes. It didn’t break the monotony or alter the piece; it didn’t seek to change the sound—it simply elevated the entire thing.

“So what is it?” She asked falling back down onto her heels.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

She led him to a private table.

“Well that figures,” Sylvain said, watching their guests of honor sit down at another table. “They’re really messing everything up, aren’t they? What do you think they’re talking about over there?”

Claude shrugged. “I know they argue a lot about cats…”

“They’re definitely not talking about cats,” said Sylvain suspiciously.

“A round of Gin until they come back?” Claude asked, faking a smile before looking over at the couple.

“Guess so.” Sylvain began shuffling the cards. “They better go through with it—the wedding, I mean.”

“Of course they will. I have every faith in Teach. Why are you so worried?”

“I just think that if someone like Felix—someone as damaged as he is—could get married, then I could do it too. You know?” Claude held both his silence and his cards close to his chest. “I bought a ring,” Sylvain said. “They inspired me.” He gestured at the couple sitting at the other table. “I was going to ask Dorothea to marry me.”

“And if they decide not to go through with their plans?” Claude asked, chancing another glance at Felix and Byleth.

“Yeah, well there goes that idea. If they can’t manage to tie the knot, I don’t have a hope in hell. And Dorothea, she’s been posing in pictures with other guys and posting them to Insta all month, just to make me jealous. At least, I hope it’s to make me jealous.”

Claude laid down a straight of hearts. It felt good to have cards on the table. It felt like having answers.

“This isn’t very bright of you, putting all your eggs in their basket. Now, I’m going to get Byleth down that proverbial aisle because I’m her Best Man, and you’re going to make Felix marry her because you’re his Best Man. And I won’t have you underestimating us.”

He didn’t bat an eye when Sylvain laid down a straight of clubs.

“Now as for your other problem, you brought that on yourself.” Claude settled four queens from his hand onto the table. “If you want to marry the Queen of Hearts, marry her. But don’t act like it’s anyone else’s fault if you don’t.”

Sylvain glared at the four queens.

“You think Dorothea will say yes?”

“After all you’ve been through? You probably know just how to wear her down.”

“You’re such a romantic, Claude,” Sylvain tossed his whiskey back like a shot.

“He has his moments,” Byleth cut in stepping back to the table with Felix’s hand notched into hers.

“When it comes time for my wedding, though, Fe, I’m going to do it right,” Sylvain summoned a grin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Felix growled.

“My bride will be tossing a bouquet. And _you’ll_ have to throw me a proper party and give me a speech.”

“You should let Claude plan it,” Byleth said, watching the schemer slip some cards up his sleeve.

The drinks kept flowing, and after a time, the cards paused while the conversation took on an easy measure. Four friends chatted—four friends who required highly specific keys to open up. And we’re not talking the right cocktails; we’re talking a combination of personal history, competitiveness, curiosity, and the kind of frustration that translated to perseverance and the patina of shared experience.

When Claude and Sylvain got up to grab another round, Byleth pounced again on Felix’s faraway expression.

“What is it? I thought we got everything settled.”

Felix’s eyes drifted back to Byleth’s face, pink coals burning in his cheeks. “We fit together, opposite and the same.”

That’s what it was? He was just thinking about them—about love? “Are you trying to write your vows?”

“Like puzzle pieces.”

“You’re drunk.”

“We are like a duet.”

“You’re completely wasted,” she said looking at him in alarm.

He wasn’t wrong, though. What his fool mouth was trying to slur between sips of burning liquor was how perfect they were to do this duet: Byleth had fallen in love with Felix with her mind first, and her heart had followed. Felix had fallen in love with Byleth with his heart first, and his mind had followed.

How do you say that, though? Some people just don’t.

He let his too-skilled fingers slip between her own, as they interlocked in something as simple as holding hands.

* * *

**i will love you till i die**

They were getting married. They were getting married and a good majority of the guests didn’t know it. They had constructed the ruse such that anyone who wasn’t part of Felix’s and Byleth’s close inner circle thought they were attending a special duet concert. Anyone who was in their inner circle had been glared at enough to keep their mouths shut.

The Grondor Fields venue set them up a small concert space with a big grand piano. Where the house doors of a theater would normally be was a long curtain partition. Behind the curtain were tables of food, open seating, a big spice cake that Mercedes had made, a dais for the band, and space for rocking out.

Okay, so Mercedes knew, and their dads knew, and the band members knew, and Annette who was in charge of herding the cats into the reception room knew, and her partner Ashe knew, and their best men Claude and Sylvain knew, and Seteth knew, and Ingrid who had flown in from New York knew, and the people who were flying in from California knew, and those driving down with the band suspected.

Okay, so everyone knew they were at a wedding. The important thing was that Felix and Byleth didn’t feel like they were throwing a wedding so much as a good concert with a really good celebration afterward. And some time in the middle, they would kiss and sign the paperwork that would bind their names together until they died.

Annette had put Byleth’s hair up in a plaited bun with soft bangs floating down. Felix’s hair was up in one of his more intricate pony-tails. For once, while hiding away and waiting to perform, it was Felix who wanted to rip all the pins out of Byleth’s hair. He wanted to pull it all down and press her against the wall, to go ahead and consummate the damn thing.

“Felix,” Byleth groaned, “stop looking at me like that.” Of course, she couldn’t help escalating the matter by twisting around in the slinky backless dress all trimmed up in soft lace.

“Like what?” he teased, tugging the cravat Sylvain had tied and pinned into his vest.

“Like you want to rip this dress off me, and deflower me right here and now.”

“Deflower?” he smirked, “I don’t think you know what that means.” Her eyes narrowed. He could feel her pinching his elbow before she even did it. “You know, we could run away right now.”

“Why run away? Our schemes work.”

“You seriously believe that a single person in that audience doesn’t know it’s our wedding? We hand-picked the guest list. They all know each other.”

She laughed, “Well maybe not that, but our other scheme.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “That one worked.” He tugged on his deep blue jacket and took her arm to lead her out to the piano.

Byleth had composed the pieces that they would duet, and Felix had arranged them. The music was a product of the years: the first prelude and boat song that Byleth had ever composed for Felix; pieces that they had played together in clubs; Felix had even arranged her latest finished work, the ‘Old Cat Blues’.

Yet, he didn’t feel the need to talk about music all the time—he lived it. And Byleth’s music? He was privileged to live that every day, so let’s just say this:

Let’s just say the concert was perfect. Whether the audience knew it or not, it told a story that neither of them would be able to speak in words.

Let’s just say that by the time they finished playing their music, none of their friends criticized them about not saying their vows.

Let’s just say that a full quarter of the audience couldn’t help not being dry-eyed, including the old punk rocker and violinist in the front row.

When it was over, they stood, their lips trembling slightly, and Byleth put on her most authoritative teacher voice to say, “Thank you everyone for coming to our performance. We have something to admit to you, this isn’t just a performance—it’s our wedding. We hope that you will all stay here as witnesses. We’re almost through it now, so all we have to do is sign some papers, and there’s a party we hope you’ll enjoy.”

Murmurs went through the crowd, few enough to tell them that they had been right to suspect that everyone had guessed their real purpose. Although, there was a gratifying, “No way!” from Caspar’s too-loud voice, and some none-so-gentle shushing from others.

Their witnesses, Claude and Sylvain, came to the paperwork signing.

“Hey,” Sylvain said loudly from the front of the makeshift theater. “We’re not going to make you say your vows out loud or anything, but you guys do have to kiss.”

They both looked at Sylvain as if they might pull daggers out of their overly-coiffed hairdos and start throwing them at him.

Then, Felix grabbed Byleth and wrapped his arms around her back. He leaned in with an eternity on his lips, a promise of love till death. Not to be out-done, Byleth’s kissing went all in, cards on the table, no tricks up her sleeve, she singed Felix to the back of his throat.

They didn’t hear the whistling from ill-behaved former students. They didn’t see Sylvain’s gigantic grin or Rodrigue’s light blush. They didn’t hear Jeralt’s slow clap or Ingrid’s ‘Oh!”.

They were still kissing when Claude and Sylvain edged off the stage, eyebrows raised and gleeful. And when the curtain behind the audience opened into the reception hall. Nor did they stop for Caspar calling loudly, “Get a room!,” Edelgard shushing him, Balthus speculating on the disappointing lack of bridesmaids, or Dorothea leading the band to the raised dais to begin tuning up.

To the ones locked in the kiss that had become their only vow, this hubbub was nothing more than white noise. It was nothing to Felix’s hand brushing the back of Byleth’s neck, or her arms laced up his back for once so chastely, or the slight sway they had accepted as their rhythm, or the boat songs that hummed between their lips, promising that they would find shore because they always had each other.

* * *

**and i will love you all the time**

Family milled about through the reception room. Not the blood-is-thicker kind, because Felix and Byleth didn’t have much of that aside from their dads, but the kind who take in strays like lost items that inexplicably become their favorite things—

Family, like Sylvain and Ingrid who had known Felix since they were kids, milled around the buffet tables. Family, like Annette and Claude who had given him the best wedding gift of all by teaching Byleth how to love him just years ago, charmed the guests. Family, like Dorothea and Ashe who were steady and there for them, kept smiles on peoples’ faces.

While the band played, Claude twirled Felix’s bride as they laughed and grinned their special outsiders’ grins, and Felix only half wanted to punch him. The rest milled around with the cats. Claude’s plus-one Hilda raised her eyebrows and did a full-titted shimmy at Dimitri’s plus-one Marianne a quiet girl of hidden depths.

Ferdinand complimented Mercedes on the spice cake, while Hubert stepped behind the open bar to brew a pot of coffee until Ferdinand joined him side-by-side at the tea station. Edelgard haunted the tables, looking to conscript their guests into her latest business venture. Caspar was filling a full plate of food while scolding Lindhardt about sleeping through half the concert, while Lindhardt waited his turn to scold Caspar about his mountain of food.

Dorothea’s band had gone through cycles the way everything does. A band is a project, for some, it’s almost progeny, and both have growing pains. They had split up for solo projects, gotten back together for a reunion album, and split up again. Bernadetta was ghost-writing as a lyricist for five different bands now, and this was the only one that put her name on the credits. Yuri had come a long way from the granulated eyelids of his grad school makeup. He joined the band when he could but mostly stepped back into the roles of his day job. And still, it was Dorothea’s transcendent vocals that bound them all together.

But a band apart still knows how to jam together when the time comes, much in the same way that Byleth and Felix had grown together sharing their tempos. The band played, and it was like stepping back in time. The familiar faces of all their friends reverted to the expressions they all remembered from their Mach Coffeehouse days, as they bumped their heads to the music and moved their hips, all in anticipation for the beat to pick up, for the hopping and the twirling and the jumping.

“Remember that time you punched Felix while moshing,” Sylvain was grinning over his drink once he made sure Felix was out of earshot. He waited giddily for a cue to continue his story, and Rodrigue delivered.

“But he never told me that!” Byleth’s new father-in-law rubbed at his beard and looked at her in surprise.

“Noise pop really gets Byleth going,” Claude joked by way of explanation. Rodrigue, of course, looked more puzzled than ever.

“I heard he had to be taken away in an ambulance,” gossiped Ashe who had clearly gotten the tall tale from Annette.

“I heard he thanked you for punching him,” Edelgard said, her face as serious as Byleth’s was blank.

“I bet he was turned on,” Sylvain said.

“So turned on,” Hilda corroborated.

Rodrigue coughed to clear his throat.

“I heard he was out cold for hours,” Caspar said, joining in the conversation late, blue hair shining around the edges from exuberant dancing.

“He wasn’t out for hours—he was fine,” Ingrid said dismissively.

Byleth smiled, thinking about the first promise Felix had made her that night, that he would never walk out.

“I heard he was seeing stars for days,” she joined in the joke.

“That’s my girl,” Jeralt chuckled.

“Where is Felix anyway?” Sylvain asked.

“I saw him over by the buffet feeding fish to the cats. That weird big one was humming at him while it was eating.”

“Mussorgsky does that,” Byleth said, giving Ashe the stink eye.

“Look I took a video.” While Leonie showed the video around the group, Byleth snuck off—as much as a bride can sneak at her own wedding—to find her missing groom who would rather be socializing with the cats.

She found Felix leaning against the wall, taking in a tableau of all the people he had ever grown even marginally close to. The band was taking a break, leaving the room a collage of voices around them. Byleth leaned against the wall beside him. Did she see the tableau the same way? Did she feel it how he did? She slid him a smile from the corner of her mouth.

They wouldn’t be allowed to be alone for long, though. They had caught Hilda’s eye, and she started clinking a metal fork to her cocktail glass. Soon all the guests were doing it. A crowd of people turned to where they were standing against the wall, clinking at them.

“What does it mean?” Felix asked, diverting his eyes from Sylvain’s grin where he and Dorothea stood close by the stage.

“They want us to kiss.”

“We’re supposed to kiss on command? Fuck that.”

“Shut up,” she said and grabbed his face. They both came away from the kiss smiling. It was stupid, but they couldn’t help it.

* * *

**so please put your sweet hand in mine**

The band struck up some Chopin-rock for Byleth and Jeralt’s father-daughter dance, and the two of them rumbled to it laughing at each other.

Felix had never actually seen Byleth in anyone’s arms but his own. There with Jeralt—setting aside the beery grins and the teasing—she looked small, almost sweet, a light fragile thing. What an optical illusion—an Eisner was an ironworker, someone fused from iron themselves, strong, the both of them. And now he would be one too.

“Felix,” Rodrigue said, pulling him aside, “I had a look at your wedding paperwork.” Felix held himself back. He had prepared himself for this. “There might be a mistake, a big one.”

Felix waited silently, his eyes narrowing at his father. As much as they had been through, Felix still couldn’t help testing him. This, though, could be the final test. If Rodrigue could be supportive about this, maybe Felix could forgive him most everything.

“It says here that you’re taking Byleth’s name, not the other way around. Your legal name will be Felix Eisner?”

Felix nodded.

“I must admit, I’m a little troubled. I thought that the plan was for Byleth to take your name—to help her career. And this move seems to help neither of you.”

“We decided this was the better path.”

“And you won’t be Felix Fraldarius anymore?”

“It’s in the middle somewhere: Felix Hugo Fraldarius Eisner.”

“Please help me understand why this is the better path.”

“We’re making our own way, just like we said we would without the fame.”

“You’ll never be able to completely escape it.”

“I know that, but neither of us wanted fame. It was a warped desire brought on by the name. It didn’t mean anything to me to fill houses when I performed. More than that, we want to be able to do what we love and be ourselves.” He raised a hand to his face, trying to think his words through. It was important, he realized just at that moment, so important for Rodrigue to understand. “Look at all our friends here. It’s a small gathering, and they care about us. I’d rather have that than arenas.”

“And Byleth?”

“She agrees with me.”

“You’re still my son, though.”

“You can’t change blood. And I’ll still have your hair.”

Rodrigue laughed, but his voice dropped into a more somber tone, “I thought I would be accepting a daughter today, not giving away my son.”

“Can’t it be both? Our family is too small for us to lose any more.”

Rodrigue stopped moving, and there was a stately stillness to his stance. “Of course. You’re right.”

The sounds of Chopin’s music, made rough and rocking, passed between them. Rodrigue met Felix’s eyes, “I am so proud of you.”

Felix blinked something away from his face, something that was internal and powerful and trying to get out.

He looked down at his feet, and then stared around the room, his attention pulling inevitably to where Byleth was still dancing with her father, both of them making identical silly confused faces that said they didn’t know what they were doing at all.

He took a sip from his rye glass and held the burning liquid in his mouth hoping to evaporate away some of the saltwater that kept welling up in his eyes.

“So,” Rodrigue said, “speaking of our small family, now that you’re married, when can I expect some grandchildren?”

Felix wretched and spit the rye across the floor in an arc, like a poorly designed booze fountain, while some of it burned its way up his nose.

Byleth turned to look at him from across the room, her eyes tracking between her spitting husband and her laughing father-in-law.

* * *

  
**and float in space and drift in time**

Another pile of photos had come in the mail. Byleth had a sneaking suspicion that, since she and Felix hadn’t hired photographers, Annette had organized a whole force of their guests to take photos throughout the event. She didn’t tell Felix this, though, for fear he’d go on a crusade to shut it down. Now Annette was in the process of printing out the best ones.

The stacks of pictures kept coming, addressed through the mail to the Eisners.

Photos of Byleth dancing with Jeralt. Photos of Felix talking with his dad. A photo of Ignatz sketching the married couple when they were leaning up against the wall. Many photos of their improperly long kiss.

Photos of the band, of Caspar dancing with his mohawk, slicked up just like in college, of Sylvain standing up to give a speech. Pictures of their dads talking together, of Edelgard trying to claw Hubert into a picture with her. Stealthy photos of Hubert and Ferdinand standing very close together at the coffee and tea station.

There was Claude setting up a card game at a table that eventually drew Dorothea and Sylvain. Here was Dorothea posing with a bunch of flowers someone had stolen from one of the catered table settings. Another showed Yuri talking to Bernadetta through the door of a closet.

Here was Mercedes walking around to make sure everyone ate their cake; Balthus chatting with Hilda; Marianne and Dimitri sitting at a table with Rodrigue. There was Leonie picking at an acoustic guitar on the stage dais; Felix feeding cats; Byleth jamming with her dad on stage.

“More?” Felix asked as Byleth opened another envelope of photos. She scattered them across the piano stool to look at them.

“I’ve never had big family photos before.” Sometimes Byleth was too honest.

They had converted the well-intentioned but ill-used inspo board into a gallery to hang their favorites. Felix never put them up himself. He left his picks out where Byleth would find them, and she pinned them up. Familiar faces dotted and patterned the board in no particular order, reclaiming the crime scene with memories. In the center was a large photo of Felix and Byleth together at the piano.

“What do you think, Mr. Eisner?” Byleth asked showing him a picture of Sylvain down on one knee in front of Dorothea. “One for the board?”

Felix nodded. The new name prickled the back of his neck. It was a good thing—the sound of freedom. He watched Byleth pin the photo next to one of Ingrid swinging an arm around his shoulders at the buffet.

“You know, all this reminiscing is making me want to reenact other parts of our wedding night.” He stepped up behind her, putting one hand on her hip and using the other arm to wrap around the front of her shoulders.

“Oh,” She melted against him. “That was a good one.” There were no photos of _that_ , but she remembered it all very vividly.

“They’re all good ones,” he said, taking the stack of pictures out of Byleth’s hand and setting them down on the piano keys.

As Byleth turned around in his arms, her hands trilled across his chest and up to his shoulders before starting to inch into his hair. There would be plenty of time to think about family, to think about new compositions, to forge a future with iron and music, once they finished this duet, she thought, as Felix led her down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felix taking Byleth's name = commence mercenary route.
> 
> I couldn't have gotten them down the proverbial aisle without [ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGbOqadHb0) looping for hours.
> 
> I don't know why but these silly pianists mean way too much to me. Thank you for reading!!


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